Planning my Showreel

Over the past few days I have been considering what my own showreel should contain, and how I am not going to make the mistakes that others have made. The key points that I believe my showreel needs are:

• Well chosen music - Music that does not distract from the work, preferably without words. Something that is background music, not a track that would be on my mp3 player.

• No longer than two and a half minutes.

• Show no more than my 4 best pieces of work . Anything else should be on a website that is clearly linked with the showreel. If the person viewing the showreel wants to persue me any further, then the next step would be to check my portfolio site.

• Show texture passes poly counts and wireframes. These details help display your technical knowledge, and show that you aren't just showing off a sculpt.

• Posed models - Make sure the models are posed in a way that helps show the personality of the character, without being to complex.

• Different views - Show details that are worth showing, eg. Faces, impressive mechanical parts, detailed cloth deformation, etc.

• Contacts details showed clearly.
  
  

The next thing to do was to look at my previous work, and see what would need to doing to them to make them showreel ready. Personally, I can only see a few bits of work that I would even consider bringing up to showreel quality.

The first of which is the Tauren model I did at the start of the summer.

This is actually a good start on a tauren model, the quality of the work is probably good enough to bring up to portfolio quality with ease, It just needs finishing.  The model is pretty much early days in its life, this was the stage where id have started detailing it. I would say its probably about half way to being done as a sculpture. It is a model I would like to finish, but to try to take it on as one of my project this year would feel a bit cheeky, and I think that by the time uni is done I would want to do the whole thing again.

The other piece is a character model I worked on over the holidays for a mod that was FPS game set around the Red Alert 2 world. Unfortunately I didn't get to finish before uni started again.

This guy was designed to be a low poly character - around 5-6k, so he is not detailed. The peice itself is OK but I think it could be a lot better. To bring it to showreel quality, the model would need to have more detail added in, and be finished.

As it stands, I doubt either of these pieces will make it into my final portfolio or showreel. I plan on making work this year of a much better standard, ad that will be what makes up my showreel. The way I have planned my AMA module is in such a way that the work I will create in it will show a variety of disciplines within the field of character modelling.  I am trying to tick a lot of boxes, without spreading myself too thin, I hope that it shows diversity, and doesn't make me look like I am a jack of all trades and a master of none. Time will tell.